upFRONT

The world's first multimedia computer (and what a computer it
was, as any Amiga freak would love the chance to tell you) came out
in 1985 with a 7.1MHz MC68k, 4096 colors, stereo sound, and was
enough to convert even Commodore 64 fanatics. Oddly enough,
Commodore acquired Amiga for $40 million back in July of '85, and
then destroyed its hopes of success by hapless marketing ploys.
Commodore itself died in 1995, and was sold to ESCOM for $12
million. Gateway ultimately acquired what remained of Amiga, and it
looked as though they were poised to bring back the once and future
queen. However, Gateway had bought Amiga for the patents, not for
its devotees, and the new vaporware Amigas never materialized. (You
remember the rumors—that it would be Linux-based, etc.)

Today, Amiga is owned by Amino Development Corporation which
has changed its name to Amiga Corporation and plans yet again to
resurrect the multimedia machine. However,
you don't have to wait; Amiga will carry on.
Rush on over to
http://www.themes.org/
and you can download Amiga themes for your favorite window
managers. Yes, that's right, the Amiga Workbench
2.x series (known as Picasso, presumably
because the colors correspond with Picasso's blue period) can live
again on your desktop. Pair it with GNOME and its new anti-aliasing
feature, and you've got it. Fire up the GIMP, start up an ETerm and
maybe load XClock; it'll be just like home. Well, until you try to
load Video Toaster. But, hold on a while; what with DVDs, MP3s, a
bit more sound support and the new wave of games (and the hardware
support they will drive), we might actually have multimedia
machines someday.

—Jason Kroll

THEY'RE AT IT AGAIN

Last month in my games column, I noted that the
authoritarians had given up the MP3 war and lost control of the
DeCSS situation. Unfortunately, some people don't know when to
quit, and the industry is back at it again. This time, the
Recording Industry Association of America has held secret meetings
in Seattle in order to plot the demise of MP3 as well as other
conniving ways to take control of technology out of the hands of
users. The real news, however, was that the Motion Picture
Association of America got in hot water over the raiding of DeCSS
author Jon Lech Johansen's house by special police. The hacker
community more or less collectively called for a boycott, ranging
from DVDs to the entire motion picture industry and even extending
to every single product, film-related or not, produced by any of
the big seven (Disney, Sony, MGM, Paramount, Fox, Universal Studios
and Warner Bros.). The 2600 community organized large protests
outside movie theaters across the country. This charming graphic
featured prominently in the thousands of flyers we
distributed.

—Jason Kroll

TUX GAMES

Enthusiasts of Linux gaming, and those who realize games
drive the hardware industry, will be pleased to hear that Tux Games
(http://www.tuxgames.com/)
is shipping its new Demo CD of six playable demos of popular Linux
games for $7.50 with free shipping. Titles include Loki's
Civilization: Call to Power, Eric's Ultimate Solitaire, Heroes of
Might and Magic III, Myth 2: Soulblighter and Railroad Tycoon II,
as well as a playable demo of MP Entertainment's Hopkins FBI. Yes,
Linux has games, did you know? Check out
http://www.happypenguin.org/
and http://www.linuxgames.com/ for general information on the state
of the art in Linux gaming.